{"id":1508,"date":"2012-04-13T08:44:28","date_gmt":"2012-04-13T12:44:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/?p=1508"},"modified":"2012-04-13T08:44:28","modified_gmt":"2012-04-13T12:44:28","slug":"more-on-amazon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/2012\/04\/13\/more-on-amazon\/","title":{"rendered":"More on Amazon"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Jenny<\/p><\/div>\n

Once again, Jenny Milchman<\/a> asked some good questions and made me think hard. So I’m publishing her email and my (much windier) reply here because I don’t want them just getting buried in Comments.<\/p>\n

The most intelligent summation I\u2019ve read yet. Thank you for clarifying Amazon\u2019s position.<\/p>\n

I disagree on one point\u2013the cost of an e book in terms of physical product does go down. But that doesn\u2019t mean it costs nothing for the traditional publisher. That book still needs to be acquired, edited, designed, laid out, and marketed. I would say only a fraction of the cost is in actual print and distribution.<\/p>\n

Me:<\/p>\n

Jenny, I\u2019m not saying there are no costs whatever \u2013 I\u2019m saying there are virtually no additional costs above and beyond what they\u2019ve already spent to produce the hard and softcover editions. By the time they put out the ebook, they have a completed proofed manuscript, cover art, etc. All they\u2019re doing is posting files on a server to be downloaded.
\n\"\"<\/a>A great deal of the price of a Big Six ebook is subsidizing the costs of print publication and supporting the people \u2013 editors, proofreaders, etc. -that go into the making of the completed manuscript. Those skilled folks earn their money \u2013 their labor shows in the finished product \u2013 but readers resent underwriting the costs of warehousing, printing, etc. when they\u2019ve bought a product that requires none of it.
\nI realize now, looking at what I\u2019ve written above, that it\u2019s not entirely true. The reality is that ebooks are the tail wagging the dog. They make the profit that keeps the business alive \u2013 all the growth in book sales for several years now have been in ebooks. But publishers continue to treat them as an afterthought to print books, encouraging the kind of thinking above. Just another place where they do themselves no favors.
\nMost analyses see ebooks as taking the place of the old mass-market paperback. Which would suggest a cover price in the $5.99 to $9.99 range, just where Amazon wants to target them \u2013 and likely where they will settle when this all shakes out.
\nBy trying to force prices up artificially, publishers over-reached and did so foolishly, in a way that blatantly breached anti-trust law.
\nI am truly convinced this doesn\u2019t have to be the end of the publishing business \u2013 but publishers will have to make real changes to their physical infrastructure and customs and to the pay scales and staffing levels they\u2019ve gotten used to. There will be a lot of people working on a project basis or earning less than before and I say that knowing the amount of pain those words camouflage. But the business model is bloated by today\u2019s standards.
\nDavid Morrell stood up in front of an audience of writers at ThrillerFest last year and said that, unless publishers adjusted their contract terms and pricing regarding ebooks, he couldn\u2019t sign a publishing contract today. When publishers hear things like that, they should be listening \u2013 and changing.
\nMy point, I suppose, is that Amazon isn\u2019t killing them; by stubbornly refusing to adjust to new realities, they\u2019re committing suicide. I sincerely hope they don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once again, Jenny Milchman asked some good questions and made me think hard. So I’m publishing her email and my (much windier) reply here because I don’t want them just getting buried in Comments. The most intelligent summation I\u2019ve read …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,3,27,4],"tags":[123,254,26,45,8],"class_list":["post-1508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-e-books","category-my-books","category-the-digital-world","category-writing","tag-amazon","tag-e-books","tag-publishing","tag-the-web","tag-writing-2"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1508"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1512,"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1508\/revisions\/1512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tedkrever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}